This study in the book of Hosea was given by pastor Barry Forder at Calvary Chapel Portsmouth on 8th August 21.
In this study we begin to see the list of ‘issues’ God raised with Israel for the way they had behaved toward Him. Hosea’s personal life will now fade into the background and the rest of the book is prophetic.
Out of the heartbreak in his own home, Hosea, as God’s mouthpiece, now speaks to the nation to spell out the specific charges against them. Principally these were:
- Lawlessness;
- Immorality;
- Ignorance of God’s Word;
- Idolatry. (Covetousness is idolatry, Col 3:5)
God will address the people, the priests (who should have been teaching the people) and the royal family – who should have been leading the nation in a godly way.
Instead, the nation had been given over to idolatry, so God eventually says ‘let them have it their way!’
H.A. Ironside comments:
Nothing can be more solemn than this. It is as though God had exhausted every possible means for their recovery, save one, and that one the giving them up to learn, by bitter experience, what they would not take to heart in any other way. In the New Testament it answers to being “delivered unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” (See 1 Corinthians 5). “Observe: it is only after the failure of all other means to recover the wanderer that God so deals with souls”.
There are many lessons in here for the church and for those who have grown cold toward God. God knows and sees.
May you be blessed and encouraged by this study.
